


Everything's Not Lost. Just Most Things

by Annakovsky



Category: Lord of the Rings RPF
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2004-02-17
Updated: 2004-02-17
Packaged: 2017-10-09 16:39:24
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,938
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/89493
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Annakovsky/pseuds/Annakovsky
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Dom stops telling the truth upon his arrival in LA, but it is three weeks before Billy realizes.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Everything's Not Lost. Just Most Things

Dom stops telling the truth upon his arrival in LA, but it is three weeks before Billy realizes. (He hadn't known LA was infectious like that, that lies could spread like influenza or chicken pox. He wonders if this has been studied.) Once he has made this realization he is shocked that it took him so long to hear the desperate forced cheer underlying Dom's voice. "LA's amazing, just fantastic," and, "Man, I had a good time last night," and, "It's great out here, Bill, you'd love it."

Three weeks for him to realize and he thinks he must not have been paying attention. Doesn't know how that could be, because he is always paying attention to Dom. Knows his tones of voice and moods and tricks of speech, knows Dom at every hour of the day. Knows how to listen for what he doesn't say. But somehow he didn't hear.

He begins to count the true things Dom says, listening for the subtle differences in tone, in breath, in inflection. Numbering them, the times Dom says something real. They are few and far between. Towards the end of one conversation, after a long, fast-paced ode on Dom's side to the new sushi place he's found, there is silence, Dom finally out of words. Billy mmms and lets the quiet set in, brushing some crumbs off the counter absently, holding the receiver between his chin and shoulder.

"I miss you," Dom says suddenly into the silence, a naked statement of fact that feels all the more bare for the surface chatter of moments before. Billy closes his eyes, takes a breath. That's one.

"I miss you, too," he says quietly.

***

A week later, Billy gets the first in a series of drunk, possibly high, Dom calls. They always come after a late night of clubbing on Dom's part, putting them at lunchtime in Scotland. It is strange to hear wasted, end-of-the-evening Dom when the sun is high overhead and Billy is making a sandwich, puttering around his quiet house. Feels wrong. Eight time zones is too many.

Drunk Dom talks about colonizing the moon. "You an' me, Billy, we'll, y'know, terr-... terrafi... terrafu... make a bubble and grow stuff."

"Terraform?" Billy asks, cutting up a tomato.

"Yes! We'll do that. We'll make it so stuff is growing everywhere, like a jungle, right? It'll be like the Shire, all green and lush and perfect, and no one will be allowed but you and me. And maybe Lij and Sean, if they ask nicely. And at night we'll go outside the bubble in our spacesuits and jump around in the craters and watch the earth rise. And we'll wave at it and yell but the only people that will hear us will be each other because we're too far away. And because on earth they'll all be walking along looking at their shoes and saying nasty things about each other so they'll never even look up and see us, bouncing around like kangaroos way up there in space."

"Don't you think it'd be lonely, Dommie, so far away?"

"You crazy, Bill? Hobbits don't get lonely, not when they have each other." Billy smiles, putting his sandwich on a plate and rummaging around the fridge for an apple. "Besides," Dom adds, quietly. "The earth is lonelier than the moon."

Fuck. Billy leans his head against the side of the fridge door for a moment. "Dom..." he starts.

"Did you know," Dom interrupts, "that the footprints the astronauts left on the moon are still there, exactly the same?" He sounds wistful. "There's no weather there, so nothing ever changes."

"Everything changes," Billy says.

"Not on the moon."

Dom talks complete bollocks when he's pissed, but it's the only time he tells the truth.

***

The next week when the caller ID says it's Dom, 'round about noon, at first all Billy hears is static. "Dom? Dominic?"

He hears Dom shouting, sounding far away, a note of panic in his voice. Then suddenly he comes in clear. "Billy? Billy! I don't know where I am, I think I'm lost...." Static cuts in, harsh in Billy's ear, and he winces, saying Dom's name urgently. Faintly, he hears Dom's voice one last time, "I'm lost, Bill," before the phone cuts out and he gets a dial tone.

Billy hangs up, swearing, and spends the afternoon frantically trying to get through to him, imagining Dom wasted and wandering in the wrong neighborhood, dead and bleeding in some Los Angeles gutter.

He finally gets Elijah at the guest house, two hours later, sounding groggy as hell. "Christ, Billy, it's six a.m."

"Is Dom there?" Billy asks, his voice urgent.

"Why, what's wrong?" Elijah asks, sounding more awake. Billy can picture him blinking, confused and curious.

"He called - it sounded.... For God's sake, just check if he's there."

"Okay," Elijah says, and Billy hears him put the phone down. Taps his fingers impatiently against the counter as he waits. Elijah picks the phone back up what seems like a year later. "Yeah, man, he's sacked out in his room." Billy sighs and slumps into an armchair.

"Thank God. Why weren't you out with him anyway, Lij?"

"I've got an early meeting." Elijah yawns loudly. "What'd he say to you, Bill? You sounded freaked."

Billy plays with a loose thread on the armchair, twists it between his fingers. Should really get the thing reupholstered. "Said he was lost."

"Oh," Elijah says, sounding thoughtful. Like that sounds ominous to him too.

"Yeah," Billy says. The seam of the chair is coming undone, the fabric fraying. He flicks at the fragmented edge, twitching it back and forth.

"He is, a bit," Elijah says slowly. "He's all over the place."

"I know," Billy says. He tugs on the long, loose thread, unraveling the fabric further. There is a grim satisfaction to watching the thread separate, the cloth thin.

"He talks to you?" Elijah sounds hopeful, eager.

"No," Billy says. He pulls a little harder on the thread.

"Oh," Elijah says, deflating. "Me neither."

Billy sighs and runs his hand through his hair. He feels very tired. "Keep an eye on him, will you, Lij?"

There is a pause, then Elijah begins, "Two eyes..."

"When you can spare them, yes," Billy finishes. "Set myself up for that one."

"Yeah," Elijah says. There is a long pause. "It'd be better if you were here, Bill. I wish you were."

Billy pulls at the thread. "Yeah," he says. "I know."

***

Billy gets Dom on the phone just before Billy goes to bed. Hung-over Dom, now, a Dom he knows well.

"You know, of course," Billy says matter-of-factly, "that I'm going to kill you."

"Knew you'd be the death of me," Dom mutters. Billy can picture him rubbing his forehead, eyes half-closed and dark-ringed. "What'd I do?"

"Gave me a bleeding panic attack, 's what you did. Do you remember calling me last night?"

There's a pause. "I called you?"

"Said you were lost. Sounded like you were about to get gunned down in an American gutter somewhere."

"I did?"

"You did."

Dom makes a pathetic, hung-over kind of noise. "I don't... oh. Oh, wait, yeah. I made a wrong turn and couldn't figure it out and then... did my phone keep cutting out?"

"It did."

"Yeah. Yeah, I remember. Phone's crap. Should get a new one."

Billy gives an exasperated sigh. "So you get lost in LA and instead of calling, oh, Elijah or Viggo or someone else who lives on the same bloody continent, you call me?"

Dom laughs humorlessly. "You know my phone doesn't know how to call anywhere else, Bill."

Billy rolls his eyes. "Dominic."

"I'm not kidding."

Billy leans against the wall of his hallway, in his empty house, and sighs. "Your phone's a bit of a pathetic wanker."

"Tell me about it," Dom says.

***

Los Angeles makes Billy profoundly uncomfortable. It doesn't feel real - too much glass in the architecture, too many bright colors, washed out in the sunshine, the people plastic and overly good looking. Like living in Barbie's Malibu Dreamhouse. The palm trees and beaches are nice, but palm trees belong in places you go on holiday, not places you live, and everything looks like a movie set. His skin crawls as soon as he gets off the plane.

Dom is the only thing he is happy to see, standing at the arrival gate. His face lightens when he sees Billy, though he doesn't quite smile. There are dark circles under his eyes, and his hug is like a death grip, hard and desperate. Billy laughs a little and grips his side. "Ooh, I think you broke a rib."

Dom finally smiles, just a little. This is an exchange they can almost do by rote, familiar and comforting. "Hope that doesn't mean you'll be whinging for the next month." He picks up Billy's bag and they start walking.

"Nah, I'm no elf," Billy says. Dom smiles a little more, darts a glance at him. Billy smiles back. "It's good to see you, Monaghan."

"And you."

They go to a coffee shop, a quiet one, and sit across from each other by the window, sun streaming through.

"You look tired," Billy says, stirring his coffee slowly.

"So do you," Dom counters.

Billy shrugs. "Jetlag."

Dom shrugs. "Los Angeles." He smiles ruefully.

"Ah," Billy says. He watches the cream swirl around in his cup, the patterns it makes. "Quite a place." He can feel Dom watching him carefully, but keeps his eyes on the surface of the lightening coffee. "Don't know if I could stand it, living here." He says the words very deliberately and glances up at Dom, meeting his eyes. He thinks that even so, if Dom asked, he might try. This is the moment he should ask.

It hangs there between them, hovering like the dust motes in the sunlight, like the steam from their coffee. Potential. Dom's eyes look very blue in this light, the shade of the ocean of southern California, bright and clear, not the dark murky gray-green of Scotland and the North Sea.

For a second he looks like he might. Ask. Lips slightly open, an expression of something about to be said. But then Dom closes his mouth and looks down, wraps his hands around his cup and lets the moment pass. When he speaks, it's to say lightly. "Yeah, you're a Scot to the core, aren't you, Bill?"

Billy nods and looks down, quiet. The cream has fully mixed into his coffee and there are no more patterns, just a milky tan surface, smooth and straightforward. "That I am." He sits back in his chair tiredly.

"Of course, L.A.'s just temporary," Dom says, taking a sip and wincing at the heat. "Someday I'll settle down somewhere. New Zealand, right? We'll all go back there." He glances up at Billy, suddenly looking very young.

"Right," Billy says, forcing cheer. "Live next door and send our kids to the same schools."

"Bet my kids'll beat up your kids," Dom says, smiling now, but with sadness lingering in his eyes.

Billy laughs. "Oh no, my kids will be too wily and shrewd for that," he says. "Besides, your kids will be far too busy tormenting Elijah's to pay mine any attention."

"I doubt that," Dom says, suddenly serious again. He fiddles with his napkin, twisting it absently with long fingers. "My kids won't be able to leave yours alone."

Billy looks at him. "Mine'll love that."

"Yeah," Dom says. "That'll be good, when we do that."

"Someday," Billy says.

"Yeah. Someday."

***  
END


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